My Angel is a Centerfold

So, in case you've been in a coma (oh how darkly funny), I am obsessed with www.icanhascheezburger.com. This is a website for people who like cats; if you don't like cats, I'm sorry that life has proved so bitter and unfortunate for you. This is a website for people who like cats talking in bad grammar. It's Cute Overload mixed with Engrish. I kind of have a problem with this website: it's slightly less addicting than cocaine. How many brilliant essays on T.S. Eliot's Buddhist influence haven't I read because I have been reading "just one more page" of this:





I start to worry that Theo, my beloved cat, is getting jealous of me looking at other cats online. I tell him, "Baby, they mean nothing to me" and "They're just pictures" and "But you're real!" but he'll have none of it. I even made this piece of art to convey my utter devotion:



I mean, it's not like he doesn't rub up on other girls' legs. Sometimes he leaves and he goes out all night and doesn't come home until 2 in the morning. What am I supposed to do? Isn't it all just animal nature?

So I bought Theo a collar and a tag so that if he runs away, he'll find his way back home. Since he is originally from Alameda, and thus a sailor, I bought a nautical themed "beastie band" foam collar. The tag was a red heart, like my passionate, burning one for him. I put it on him one morning and he freaked out. He hid in the closet most of the day (which he never does) and cried ALL FUCKING NIGHT. It was like when your hijackers deprive you of sleep before they brainwash you. Finally, after several hours of epileptic spasms he managed to get it off, and I gave in. He wins. He can run around naked at the risk of getting lost and never being returned to me if it means he's happy.

I told my Mom this story and she jokingly suggested I get him an implant. I was like, "that's a good idea." They have those, you know. I came home tonight to this supreme manifestation of a mother's love:


That's Theo! And icanhascheezburger together! It's like when your wife takes sexy pictures of herself! Yay!

Stella Cathleen

Last night I had a dream about my Dad. I dreamed that my mother was telling me over the phone that something bad had happened to him and something else about what my oldest cousin Cathy was doing. I was in a house with clear glass tea cups and pink carpet. There were a few people I didn't know in the house with me: an old woman with a camping hat on and a tall, naked grad student girl. In my dream, my Mom told me that Cathy and Hannah, her daughter, (not the people in the house I was in!) had bought The Lake House (the house I grew up in, that my Dad and his Dad built when my Dad was a teenager, the house my Mom and Dad still live in) from Nanny and Papa, my Dad's parents. I was overwhelmed with sadness. I couldn't control my crying; I was moaning with grief. I was trying not to cry in front of the naked grad student girl and the lady with the camping hat, but I couldn't stop. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to ever go home.

The Lake House:

(Look Mac, the elevator is still off the porch!)

***
A few days ago, my Dad was transferred to Emory hospital in the psychiatric unit. The specialists there quickly realized that he had been having a gnarly reaction to the head drugs he had been prescribed initially. This was good news, because it meant that firstly, they knew what was wrong, and secondly, given time, he would recover.

This whole shenanigans has been going on for about six weeks now. I've been doing just fine with all of this. I'm doing my homework and I'm paying my rent and I'm not upset. To be honest, it doesn't quite seem real to me.

But life is mysterious and things are at work that we don't understand. For example, this.

I don't believe in God, but I do believe in the Buddhist principle that everything is interconnected. Literally, everything is made out of the same stuff. I am a collection of matter. I'm a wave in a body of water. Oh, don't roll your eyes; it's not a good time to be judgmental.

Things ARE at work that we don't understand. Remember my dream? Well, last night my Dad had an emergency and was put back into the ICU; not to be all melodramatic, but he could have died. Let's cut the shit: he stopped breathing; it's fucked up. And my cousin Cathy, who hasn't been to The Lake House in maybe a decade and lives two hours away, stopped by the house because her husband was buying some tires from some guy nearby. I see Cathy maybe once a year; I'm not even sure if her name is spelled with a "C" or a "K."

More than thirty years ago, my Dad woke up one night and smelled smoke. My Mom and he searched their apartment and, finding nothing, went back to bed. That night his sister's house burned down. She, her husband, and her two young children were unharmed. Cathy was one of those children. This story doesn't make sense, but I have to tell it.

This is a picture Stella Cathleen holding my brother:


Cathy went to see my Dad at the hospital. She's a nurse. She told my Mom that she feels my Dad is going to come out of this okay. How could I not believe?

I really have no control at this point

Just Look At His Eyes!

...Mkay?

My Dad is really, really, really sick. He's been in the ICU for at least 10 days now, in a half-catatonic state. One of his best friends came to see him and my Dad didn't even recognize him.

About a month ago, he started acting really weird. He was super anxious, paranoid, and kind of crazy. He stopped sleeping. He got so bad that he let my mom take him to a psychiatrist. My Dad is a Republican, Vietnam veteran, ex-football playing, Patton-loving, commie-hater. When we were kids, he would yell "front and center" to call us. He's practically an archetype. He's not the kind of man who goes to see a psychiatrist.

So the doctor diagnosed him as bipolar, in the midst of an "acute manic episode" and loaded him with drugs. Sleeping pills and some other stuff that's supposed to "level things off." He got worse and worse. At one point my brother and I thought he was faking because he was acting so absurd. I talked to him on the phone and he acted like someone who was very, very drunk and silly. He was concerned with how nicely the window of the car rolled up. I was pissed off.

Then he got worse. He started falling down, so they took him to the hospital and that's where he is now. They don't know what is wrong with him. They've done MRIs and tested him for everything except pregnancy. He's been looked at by a neurologist who told my mother he has no idea what is wrong with him. He told my Mom that maybe it was the drugs. My Mom said, "did they like fry his brain?" and the neurologist said "that's not the term we use."

Now I'm really pissed off. Most of my anger is blind and reactionary; I'm completely powerless and frustrated. But another chunk of it is directed at how doctors jack people full of drugs when they are mentally ill. I'm so fucking sick of it.

We all know that head drugs (and that should be their medical term) are helpful for a smidgen of the population. I have at least two friends who have been helped by them. I have countless other friends, however, who have been prescribed Prozac or Celexa or that other one because they were going through a normal, early-to-mid twenties existential crisis.

The Summer after I left the church I moved home and lived with my parents. I got into a funk, which is to be expected seeing as how I had just made a huge, life-altering decision. There were other factors, too, which I'm not going to go into, that contributed to me being depressed. I talked to my family doctor and she gave me a two month supply of Celexa samples she'd surely gotten from some pharmaceutical sales rep, a six-month prescription, and the name of a therapist. I never called the therapist and I never saw the doctor again.

I took it on and off for maybe two years. I don't know whether or not it helped; nobody ever really knows what works or doesn't. I do know that after two years, right after I finished school, I started feeling really, really, really fucked up. Crazy awful terrible bad. I really wanted to die, like every minute of every day for months. I went to New York for a weekend (tickets were cheap; it was November 2001) and sat for hours and watched these kids play soccer in Central Park and I couldn't understand how they could just laugh and be happy. I got to this point where I decided that if I were going to die, I would want to do it sober, so I stopped taking the medicine. And to my surprise, a fog lifted off of me. I remember sitting in my grandpa's living room and thinking about how much my family loves him and how valuable his life is to all of us and how that must also be true for me.

About six months after that, I was reading and expose of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly in Adbusters magazine. One of the side effects that the makers of Prozac (and other SSI inhibitors) have successfully played down is akathisia, or the sudden unexplained desire to die. This quote is from wikipedia:

Ironically antipsychotic drugs are many times prescribed as “mood stabilizers” but then have the opposite intended effect, which often leads to increased doses further escalating the symptoms when the intent was to ameliorate the symptoms.

Akathisia affects up to 10% of people who take Prozac (and presumably, other SSI inhibiting drugs). That's one in every ten. After reading this article, I realized that that was probably what had happened to me. It was healing to know that I was not innately crazy and fucked up, but it also pissed me off.

My Mom was given head drugs for a short period of time in the mid-80s. The doctor didn't tell her that they were addictive and she went through hellacious withdrawal symptoms. My mother's mother's personality changed completely when she started taking Lithium in the mid 60's. As a part of Kaiser's stop-smoking program, I took anti-anxiety head drugs a few years ago and also had a bad experience with them (mainly just a lot of crying).

I'm not crazy. My mother isn't crazy. My grandmother, both of them, aren't crazy. My friends aren't crazy (even the ones who think they are). None of us are fucking crazy. We're human beings who, as we move through life, experience inexplicable ups and downs. We are irrational, sensitive, quirky people who are artists and writers and musicians and cupcake bakers who have problems adapting to a world that wants us to iron and check our voice mail and have perky tits.

If someone lives in a cold damp house and smokes Marlboro Reds and doesn't wear a scarf
and eats frozen pizza and drinks too much and doesn't sleep, she is going to have a cold all the time. And if she goes the doctor, the doctor will give her antibiotics or tell her to get some Robitussin. And if she's really sick, she might really actually need antibiotics or Robitussin. But she also needs to take care of the situation that caused the cold in the first place.

So my Dad is really really sick, but I have no idea what he needs to get better. Obviously, drugs aren't the solution. This sucks.

Men Whose Heads Grow Beneath Their Shoulders

Disclaimer: This post is not for those who are sensitive to sickly-sweet-goody-goody-girl-sickness. If you become nauseous, click here

So, I have a whole new look, check it out:


I just have to say that I *love* grad school so much. I *love* all the work I have to do. I *love* that I have to read things that are almost too hard to understand. I *love* all the underlining and little stars in the margins. I *love* finishing my homework. I *love* it when my Freud class, my T.S. Eliot class, and my Colonialism class all allude to The Tempest and I had read three acts of it the night before. I *love* spending hours and hours reading everyday for days at a time.

I feel like those new mothers who go back to work and everyone tells them how it must be so nice to be out of the house and among and the living and they're all "I JUST WANT TO STAY HOME WITH MY BABY." I feel like that about T.S. Eliot.

I mean, I get to study weird pictures from the 15th Century from some book that some guy wrote who travelled god knows where and came back and told everybody that people out there looked like this:

I mean, what the fuck!?!

It should be easy for a man who's strong. . .

My friend Audrey is a bitchin' photographer and she took these pictures of me in my old kitchen the day before I moved. These are taken on REAL FILM like the dinosaurs used to use! You can tell because, in the second photo just like Cindy Crawford my beauty mark is on the other side. Unlike Cindy Crawford, I had mine put into my face by 400-pound sadist at Mom's Body Shop on Haight street.

Her web address is: http://www.audreyjones.net (the hyperlink thing isn't working, sorry)





If you get the allusion in the title of this post, post it in the comments and I'll mail you something cool.

Hypocrite Lecteur! --mon semblable,--mon frére!

So my brother, whose blog I'm copying, really, posted today about right-wingers who are afraid of all the "godless pinko commies" in higher education. The post is here: http://wuapinmon.blogspot.com/2007/09/liberal-bias-in-higher-education.html

My brother just finished his doctorate in Spanish Literature and right now he's scraping out a living as an Assistant Professor in some god-forsaken (or infested, depending on how you look at it) town in rural South Carolina where you have to drive 17 miles to go to a Shoney's. His male students are athletes and his female students were heavily influenced by the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton...and not ironically ("Whaaat?"). Let's generalize, shall we?

For those of you who just landed, I used to be Mormon. My brother, despite his high level of intelligence, still is (comments are welcome!). Unlike me, my brother was not the hairshirt-wearing-fascist-masochist-type Mormon that I was [see footnote 1]. He swore, he watched rated "R" movies, he skipped church sometimes, and he didn't tape moments of silence over the swear words in his Pearl Jam records. This, and the inherent patriarchy of the church (really, comments are welcome!) are, in my opinion, why he's still Elder Williams and I'm drinking coffee and beer MIXED TOGETHER. [Please see footnote 2].

Mac's post is interesting because he describes the epiphany he had on his mission where he realized that, although he thought he wasn't judging people, he was, and that there are a variety of ways to be ethical and moral in the world. One testament to his character and his intelligence (take note, there are only about four) is that, on his mission, he questioned whether or not the way he had chosen was best. That's pretty damn brave of him.

The point of his post is that if one has a set of values, or teaches one's children a set of values, those values are weak if one cannot participate in the world. In other words, conservative Christians who seek to isolate their children because they're afraid of the "bad" influence of society are really insecure about their values to begin with. I agree...BUT if I had a daughter reared on Our Bodies, Ourselves and whole grains, I'd fear for her safety if I put her in public school in Cherokee County, Georgia.

Our Mom and Dad (or Mama and Daddy, depending on how much I miss them) were big into values and ethics and morals. If our domestic scene were a play, the overall tone would be "self-righteous." And this was the case even before we converted. I believe part of the reason my Dad took so well to Mormonism [see footnote 3] was because of the impeccable moral structure [see footnote 4] and clear, well-defined codes of what is right and wrong. It's like the Jenny Craig diet where they give you all the food and help you along and, like the Jenny Craig diet, IT WORKS! I'm not being a sarcastic asshole here; if one wants to "get religion" (i.e. find purpose in one's life) and, especially, if one wants to orient one's life around the family, the Mormon church is excellent.

I agree with my brother. I agree that there are a variety of ways to live morally in the world. One of these, as shown especially well by my brother, is the Mormon church. Another one is showing kindness toward your friends by following this recipe:

* One pint Guinness Lager
* One shot espresso
* One scoop chocolate ice cream

Blend. Pour into a pint glass. Serve on tray with a Nat Sherman and a copy of The Delta of Venus. It takes all kinds.

* * *

[Footnote 1] Hairshirt: "A garment of rough cloth made from goats' hair and worn in the form of a shirt or as a girdle around the loins, by way of mortification and penance."

[Footnote 2] I should say here that our family converted to the church, staggeringly, between 1990-1994. I hold that those who were raised Mormon have different reasons for staying/leaving (such as, oh, belief). If you don't think I respect that, please reread this post.

[Footnote 3] I'm writing for the non-LDS person here. Mormons don't call themselves "Mormons." They call themselves "LDS," which is short for "Latter-day Saint" which comes from the name of the church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[Footnote 4] A definite case can be made against an "impeccable moral structure" in the church if one looks at the church's historical relationship (as opposed to its present-day one) with African-Americans. Also, one could argue that the church privileges men. However, one can also argue that church doctrine itself (as opposed to the people in the church) is not sexist and, in fact, privileges women. I'm on the slightly-disturbed-about-everything-concerning-Brigham-Young bandwagon (comments welcome!). Also, several people I know would never call anyone who knocks at their door wanting to convert them "moral." I don't agree or disagree.

Top Ten Ways to Avoid Doing Homework

1. Blog-posting
2. Taking really long showers (exfoliating, deep-conditioning, etc.)
3. Staring at the ocean and trying to count how many baby seals are in the water
4. Daydreaming about the raccoon that got into my apartment and how Theo defended us
5. Daydreaming about all the witty things I could say in class
6. Daydreaming about how someone would look with a pompadour
7. www.icanhascheezburger.com
8. Calling my grandpa or my Mama
9. Walking to the post office and listening to the one Neil Young song I own
10. Vacuuming in between the tiles with the hand-vacuum

Rambo Takes the Stairs

My favorite things about my new house in Moss Beach:

* Naked everything.
* I can leave shit everywhere.
* Cell phone reception is spotty.
* Theo climbs trees like a little badass.
* No sirens or car alarms or neighbors yelling.
* Local produce stands.
* AMAZING playground within walking distance with adult size swings.
* This morning I heard a man at the post office with a little puff puff Pomeranian tell his neighbor, "We always take the stairs cause Rambo is a macho man!"

My least favorite things:

* Recycling has to be separated and boxes must be broken down and tied with twine
* Population 400: Grocery store? No. Hardware store? No. Pharmacy? No. Mormon church branch!?!? YES!
* There's shit all over my apartment!
* Celery hearts cost $3.50 at the Safeway in Half Moon Bay.
* Rambo's owner was confused as to why I was laughing so hard.

Other than Rambo: Macho Pomeranian, this is my other favorite story:

Sunday I went to Farmer's Daughter, a local produce stand. I asked the older lady there if there was a health food store around anywhere because Safeway does not sell Strauss yogurt, which further proves their connections with the dark forces on the earth. After I paid she leaned in and said:

"Can I ask you a personal question?"
I nodded
"Do you have a college degree?"

What a nice personal question! I'm used to hearing, "did that hurt?" (referring to my lip piercing). I told her I did have a degree and she tried to recruit me for the "very active" Moss Beach chapter of the American Association of University Women.

I AM SO a University Woman! Hayyy!



(I didn't take this picture)

Grace

This Summer was hot. I walked everywhere and listened to songs on repeat. This Summer I wore out my shoes. I drank cup after cup of coffee. I sat in the shade and got paid to talk about Hegel, eventhough I've never studied Hegel. This Summer my brother sent me twenty postcards. I ate cilantro and sweet miso dressing. I drank every night and climbed ladders and threw bottles off of balconies. I walked to my friend's houses. I read Gunter Grass and The Master and Margarita and I memorized large sections of the Wasteland. I tried to walk to the Golden Gate bridge at 2 in the morning and fell asleep on the Marina Green. I studied Korean every day. I sent packages with no writing in them. I wore my mother's turquoise ring she got in Scotland when she was younger than me. I left it on the sink in a bar in Big Sur and someone stole it. I shook because I was nervous. I sat on a cold cement floor and read Tropic of Capricorn. I rode the ferry and asked strangers to take my picture. I ate seaweed and had dreams about elephant eels. I went swimming in a polka dotted bathing suit. I played Leonard Cohen songs on my guitar under a bridge on the edge of the world.

In the past two weeks, I've bought a car, sold a car, packed up my life, found an apartment, started grad school, quit a job, and had one hell of a cold.

And things are easy and fine. They've never been better, actually.

Today I gave a crochet lesson. It was like usual, but as she was paying me she told me that her mother had just died and her younger brother had just committed suicide. You never know where someone is at. We have a responsibility to each other to be kind and calm and a place for other people to rest.

If you love other people, you will take care of yourself impeccably so that you can do what you need to do in the world. I believe this, even if jaded people think I sound like Oprah.

Oprah's a badass. Fuck all.

I Was Just Wondering. . .

How come nobody ever argues about whether or not the devil is a woman?

It hella be Arial font and shit

Well welcome back to you too.

I was looking at my profile, in one of my frequent moments of self-absorption, and I saw that it has been viewed 144 times. Now, I know I may have looked at it at least half of those, so that means that at least 72 of those viewings were done by someone other than me. My question is, who are those people? I bet you anything it's folks I went to high school with who take sick pleasure in watching the super-judgemental Mormon girl go bad and swear like a sailor.

To them I say: I understand completely. Read on! Witness my descent! There's so much further to fall. . . I'm tattooless and I still care about other people's feelings.

***

So I decided to jump ship and move my sweet little ass down south past SF state (where I'm beginning my graduate work in less than a month). I'm gonna live next to the ocean and read dramatic novels and write papers with too many quotation marks. I'm a little English teacher bonsai. Clip clip. I'm growing into your worst nightmare.

In the meantime, I have to get rid of shit I don't need, which means going through my old "memorabilia." I opened up the dusty box of notes I passed to Tina in 9th grade and pictures of my 8th grade boyfriend (total fox with a shark's tooth [?] or jagged Corey Haim-esque stone dangling from his shapely little brown little ear), sappy, lovely letters from my way-too-nice parents, and old Gap schedules to find a poetry submission to the New Era magazine.

The New Era is a Mormon youth magazine. It's not as creepy as you think; Mormons aren't Southern Baptists. The tone is akin to a Landmark Forum weekly mixed with a real estate brochure.

On July 6th, 1994, at the budding age of 14 I mailed them a poem and I got this letter back. And you know it's hella in Arial font:

Dear Contributor:

Thank you for the your recent poetry submission. Your writing has merit and we wish to encourage you in developing your talent. We publish only one poem in each issue of the New Era except in August when we publish works from winners of the annual contest. Therefore, chances of your poems being used even if we purchased them would be remote.

We wish to encourage you (if you are between the ages of 12 and 23) to submit your poetry to the annual New Era Writing, Music, Photography, and Art Contest. The contest rules can be found each year in the September issue.

If you are over 23 years of age then we suggest you enter the Ensign contest. Rules for that contest are found in the July issue of the Ensign..

Again, thank you for thinking of the New Era.

Sincerely,

{Signature}

Diane Hoffman

***

Back in 1994, when those crazy computers were all new and shit, ladies named Diane who dotted their "i"s with fat little circles didn't yet know that what used to be underlined on a typewriter should be put into italics. And business letters had colons after their salutations. And, Diane, I submitted only one poem, so saying "poems" in the fifth line is unparallel with the rest of the paragraph, particularly because the letter is addressed to a sole "contributor." And uh-oh, Diane, your third paragraph has a double period at the end!

But really, Ms. Hoffman was a sweetie for saying my writing had merit (she did sign her letter herself). Especially since this is the poem I sent:

Song

The essence of a spirit;
A creation of God
Mistaken identitiy
A seed without pod

The soul's imbibement
The passing of time
A comforting friend
Misunderstood rhyme

Rhythmic consolate
Memory weave
Killer of time
Without leave

***

At least I didn't end the damn thing with an ellipses. However I did write "P. S. Give me a chance, not an apology." Bless Diane for ministering to hyper-emotional Mormon youth in the mid-90s.

Bless her and her fatly dotted "i"s and her convuluted final sentence in the opening paragraph. . .

I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State

I don't understand how I've been listening to the Pixies' album Doolittle for years but only recently have become absolutely obsessed with it.

I'm listening to it like Charles Manson listened to the Beatles. I'm not biking, I'm not driving my car, I'm walking just so that I can spend hours listening to my cd player. When the batteries run out, I go into some sort of primal psychological state until I can get to the next corner store and get some more. It's my blankie and I'm two.

I'm particularly obsessed with the son "No. 13 Baby." I don't have time (in part because I have to walk to where I'm going) to explicate the lyrics fully (oh but they are deserving!) but here they are:

Got hair in a girl
That flows to her bones
And a comb in her pocket
If the wind get blown

Stripes from her eyes
When she walks slow
But her face fall down
When she go, go, go

Black tear falling on my lazy queen
Gotta tattooed tit
Say number 13

Viva
Don't want no blue eyes
La loma
Want brown eyes
Rica
I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state

Choir in the yard
And the house next door
Where her grandma brought
Some songs from shore

Six foot girl
Gonna sweat when she dig
Stand close to the fire
When they light the pig

Standing in her chinos
Shirt pulled off clean
Gotta tattooed tit
Say number 13

Viva
Don't want no blue eyes
La loma
Want brown eyes
Rica
I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state

***

I thought Muddy Waters' Folk Singer was the sexiest thing I had ever heard, but I can't handle:

Six foot girl, gonna sweat when she dig. . .Standing in her chinos, shirt pulled off clean, gotta tattooed tit, say number 13.

I think I'm gonna lose my shit. I feel like if I just repeat this song over and over enough I'll eventually transcend my body and go to a world where all women are six feet tall and dig trenches for pig roasts and tattoo their boobs.

Viva La Loma Rica

=Long live the Sumptuous Hill.

EGO, the coolest girl in Provo, Utah.

Back in March, my old roommate Evonne Olson (now she has a different last name) posted a comment here asking if I remembered her. I wasn't able to write back to her because I don't have her email address. Evonne, if you read this, please email me at
susannawilliams@yahoo.com.

Evonne said:

I remember when you wore Gap clothes and had a postcard collection on our shared bedroom wall. I miss you. Do you remember me?

I remember Evonne very, very well. And I probably still wear those clothes! And my brother sends me postcards all the time, which I still tuck into my little book.

Evonne Gayle Olson (aka EGO) and I were roommates in Provo, UT, where I was going to Brigham Young University. Like many of my good girlfriends, Evonne thought I was an asshole at first because I got a little too competitive at Pictionary. [Oh, how many potential husbands I scared off in Provo the same way!] I won her over in the end, and eventually we became such good friends that I went into her closet and borrowed one of her dresses that she hadn't even worn yet.

Evonne was/is beautiful, with dark, straight hair, and dark eyes. She was olive-skinned and curvy and impeccably groomed. I used to love to steal her bath products from the shower. She and I liked to spend our time bouncing checks and borrowing money from each other to buy pajama pants at Old Navy.

The best thing about Provo is that nobody drinks. Now, I love to drink, but it's much more interesting when you have a town full of 25,000 young people who can't just get drunk and make out with each other. It's like the 1950's. People go out on dates--with people they don't want to sleep with! I lived there for a year and a half and I held one guy's hand the entire time and felt like a total whore. I mean I really held his hand, like really hard.

So instead of doing jell-o shots and dropping acid, people buy blocks of ice and slide down grassy hills. Here's a photo of us afterward:


Other people make short films parodying Mormon dating culture. Or go to ice cream socials. Or make fake fliers advertising piggy-back rides and hang them up. There is a lot of board game playing and skit happening. Or maybe, like, driving around and taking down oh, about 100 old yard sale signs and plastering them all over your roommate's room? Or wrapping up your roommate's possessions and giving them to her for her birthday? Or crashing AA conventions? Or starting a hair salon in your apartment even though you don't have any experience? Or anonymously and routinely heckling the boy who vaccuums the pool from behind the blinds in your living room?


This is a photo from our television theme-song/commercial medley skit. This part was The Facts of Life. I'm on the far left, playing Blair. (I wore that same sweater today!) Evonne is in the blue skirt. What a good sport; she played Natalie, and not very convincingly.

Have you seen Napoleon Dynamite? That movie was very BYU to me.

One April Fool's Day, Evonne had a make-up artist friend paint a perfect black eye on her. When people at work asked her what happened, she just looked down and said "I fell down the stairs. . ." Her co-workers were worried about her, but she never broke character, even the next day when it was magically healed.

At BYU, you have to wear shorts that come to your knee. You can't wear sleevless shirts and women have to wear one-piece bathing suits. But when I was with Evonne, it seemed normal to pretend to be Jenny in Forrest Gump, strumming (seemingly) naked behind a guitar to "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing" in front of our entire ward (i.e. church) for a skit. I was Nell in Gimme a Break!, vaccuuming the fish tank in a tri-panel polyester mu mu with two pillows underneath.

Evonne and I drove to Denver overnight in a blizzard that was so bad, we didn't know if we were still on the road. We were the only car for hours and we had to roll the windows down and look for reflectors on either side of us to make sure we weren't in the median. It took us 12 hours and we were delirious, and when we got to Denver I spent most of my rent money at Urban Outfitters.

I stopped going to church a year after I moved to Provo. I finished the semester and then moved back to Georgia. You'd think people would have been super-judgemental and treated me like shit, but the majority of my friends there were great. My roommates were a little confused as to how I got so good at poker (I had recently learned how to play by betting clothes with my boyfriend back in Georgia), but other than one friend, everybody just treated me like I was going through a phase. And Evonne and I still had a very good time. I said goodbye to her in the Home Depot parking lot, and sang the words to "I Don't Want No Scrub" to her while I was driving away.

We stayed friends, but I changed a lot. I went through this really long, bitter, chain-smoking, contrarian thing where I shoplifted eyeshadow as a way of sticking it to the man. Bless my heart. I was so sad. In 2002, I waited outside the Oakland temple while Evonne was getting her endowments (i.e. like a super-important Mormon thing) in motorcycle boots with a hangover.

Since the one place that Evonne and I didn't meet was politics (the only time she ever pissed me off was when she told me I was overreacting to television advertising), as time went on, things changed and we weren't able to meet each other in the same way that we had before. She should have known I would go sour; I liked Alanis Morrisette a little too much. Below is the precursor of my descent into feminism, anarchy, and uber-liberalness, which (except for the anarchy) I still revel in: me burning a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine in the sink of my apartment at BYU. Note the pajama pants.



Last I heard, Evonne married a man named (god I love it) Beau, and has two children.

Those kids be hella lucky.

Rosalie's New Looks

Last Saturday I woke up too early with a sudden desire to walk in North Beach and go sit in the poetry room in City Lights and read Eavan Boland's poem "Outside History." I love Eavan Boland. I saw her read her poems in the Herbst Theatre in downtown San Francisco three years ago. She had such a strong presence; she would finish a poem and the room would gasp.

But I didn't remember what "Outside History" was about, and I didn't understand why I wanted to read it. But I walked to the BART and walked to North Beach and bought the shittiest coffee ever at Cafe Grecco. DO NOT ever go to Cafe Grecco. Their coffee tastes like Sanka made with old Sanka water. I gave it to a homeless guy who said, "Sure! Why not?" like he was on vacation and somebody had offered him a bay cruise.

I still don't completely understand the poem, but here it is and I welcome all interpretations (which I will judge and dismiss heartily):

Outside History

There are outsiders, always. These stars--
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened

thousands of years before
our pain did: they are, they have always been
outside history.

They keep their distance. Under them remains
a place where you found
you were human, and

a landscape in which you know you are mortal,
And a time to choose between them.
I have chosen:

Out of myth into history I move to be
part of that ordeal
whose darkness is

only now reaching me from those fields,
those rivers, those roads clotted as
firmaments with the dead.

How slowly they die
as we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.
And we are too late. We are always too late.

***

Looking at it again, I believe that this poem is about the tension between associating herself with timelessness or with time, with myths or with history. Myths are timeless like stars, but History is "clotted as firmaments with the dead." And I'm pretty sure she's suggesting that "fields, . . .rivers, [and] roads" emanate darkness the way that stars emanate light, and that both reach us years after they happen.

[Which reminds me that a friend of mine cracked me up recently when he fake-justified not wearing sunscreen by saying that he didn't need to worry about it because "the light is all 8 years old and used up and shit."]

And I guess the darkness from history is reaching her now, and she's choosing to be "part of that ordeal." And she's watching things (is it just the "fields" etc.?) die slowly, knowing that because there is a lag between when things really happen and when they reach you. Thus, that's why "we are always too late."

***

So after I bought the book and I was walking down Columbus I saw a mural on the side of a building. Imagine a woman with a ponytail at the top of her forehead, and a waterfall of permed hair down the side of her head. Imagine her mid-80's purple blazer (shoulder pads) and an Italian guy in suspenders checkin' her out. I was shocked that this mural was not faded and old, but had been either recently painted or at least maintained, which meant that someone thought it still looked good.

Rosalie's New Looks is a wig shop/full salon that has been open since 1957. When I walked in, it was dusty and a large Italian woman was sitting in a barber chair reading a magazine. There was an enormously fat, long-haired, gray cat in the other barber's chair next to her. And an old skinny Italian guy with a cross around his neck. The shop was full of mannequin heads and wigs, sticky costume jewelry, and stuff. Rosalie told me about the $5 earring deals.

"How much is a haircut?" I said

I'm a sucker for getting my haircut in a weird, fucked-up place. I hate the hegemony/guilt/corporate feeling of most salons, and they cost too damn much. It reminds me of going to the dentist. For years I had my friends cut my hair, until my elder friend Billie (who got me half my wardrobe out of the Mercy Family Plaza dumpster) just went chop-chop randomly to the back of my head. I had my haircut at an Asian place that just sliced at it with a razor blade. My favorite hairdresser until now was the bad-ass, brave tranny lady who wore ocean-animal collage t-shirts with the sleeves cuffed just-so.

Rosalie charges $30, which is totally reasonable to me. I was ready right then, so she pointed at the old guy and said "Leo, can you wash her?" Leo took me into a crowded, dark room with a hair washing chair. I think Leo didn't talk, like, in general, because when he dropped a lid and it made a really loud crashing sound, he just like held his hand out and shook it, like "oops!". Right before I leaned back, I realized I didn't have any cash on me, and thank god I asked Rosalie, cause they don't take credit cards.

But I went back yesterday and Rosalie's daughter, who I thought was a drag queen at first, cut my hair. Maria was wearing a black leather cabbie hat and her eyeliner was shaped like two tildes that almost converged in a v in the center of her nose. Her skin was all leathery and she was wearing dark, heavy foundation and matte coral lipstick. And she was really nice and cut my hair excellently.

Maria worked quickly and she was not the least bit tender. She jerked my head around, pulled my scalp away from the skull when she brushed my hair, and clamped the hot iron so close to my face I'd flinch. At one point I yanked away when it touched my ear. She didn't apologize, and I admired her. I only had an hour on my parking meter.

The best part of the whole thing were the different photographs of Rosalie and her family throughout her life that were pasted on the mirror and in frames everywhere. There were pictures of Rosalie's grandchildren with her in the background, heavy and sporting a high, pyramid-esque ponytail. There was a memorial photo of her son who had died in 2002 at 31 "after a long illness" according to the obituary. There were photos of Rosalie before then, thinner and happier looking. An awkwardly written newspaper article ("So come to Rosalie's New Looks for your Saturday night party") from probably ten years ago with a photograph of Rosalie in a Marie Antoinette wig. A 40s-ish Rosalie with her husband, her sitting on a diving board in shorts with thick, great legs and, of course, perfectly styled short hair-sprayed hair. Rosalie in the early 70s, busty and shapely in an immaculate white pantsuit with a black-and-white polka-dotted collar, with long, thick, smooth hair. And then there was a thin, cute girl in a fur wrap and short heat-set curls with an older man's wrinkled hands wrapped over hers. And finally, baby Rosalie sitting still and expressionless in her mama's lap.

A friend of mine lived in Italy and told me that the sickest thing he heard about was "Sicilian Divorce." This is where a man, living in an uber-Catholic society that doesn't condone divorce, pays to have his wife murdered so that he may remarry. He explained that old Italian men spend their time sitting out on the street corner playing games and ogling ladies, but that he felt sorry for old Italian women. He said old Italian women turn into trolls. I told him that was mean.

But then I saw how baby Rosalie changed from a sweet little sharp-elbowed girl in pin curls to the the mother of a dead son and the matron of a dusty drag queen supply store.

***

And I guess now when I think about sitting amidst all the mannequin heads from different decades, and seeing how something like a woman's bone structure, i.e. her bones, can be trendy, I see why Boland would say:

Out of myth into history I move to be

It's the Year of the. . .

My brother, who is much smarter and cooler than I would ever give him credit for, put a post on his blog just for me yesterday.

His address is: http://wuapinmon.blogspot.com/

It's about cats, and if you love me, you love them too. Especially fat ones with thought bubbles.

ESPECIALLY FAT ONES.

I have always associated people with animals. One day I just knew that my Aunt Connie WAS a raccoon. My first boyfriend was a duck, another one was a beetle, one was a bear cub/moth, and one was even some sort of large, carniverous cat, I swear to God; he'd nip the back of my neck like I was a weak gazelle he'd just run down and he wanted to be sure I was dead. Then he'd growl.

My friend Tristy? A sea otter. She agrees. I also think she could be one of the those cute sloths that live up in the trees is Costa Rica and sleep all day. Her husband is a polar bear (his last name is Hunter!).

My mother is one of those picturesque, beautiful seals, but she's also a rabbit. There are lots of rabbits. One of my roommates is also a rabbit, but a different kind of rabbit. My old roommate Brenda is a pretty, dope-y bunny. My friend Leslie is a foxy chipmunk. This girl who works at the local DIY co-op looks so much like a giraffe it freaks me out.

I once offended a very good friend of mine by telling him that I thought he was a monkey. Everybody wants to be a tiger or a deer or a shark or some sexy, strong animal--a barricuda, a snow leopard, a black widow. People want to be like basketball teams.

But there are beautiful and awkward versions of every animal. My Aunt Connie, the raccoon, is a lovely human being, but I wouldn't call her sexy. And I have seen some very sexy raccoons. Being a beautiful three-toed sloth is so much better than being an awkward gazelle. However, if someone ever calls you a hyena, they probably don't think much of you.

And I'm not sure if most people are really able to see what animal they really look like. I've been trying to figure out what animal I resemble most for a long time. I was starting to think it was a cat:

1. I have big, fluffy hair that I'm always tending to.

2. I don't like to take a bath or get my hair wet.

3. I like to run around the house when I'm excited.

4. I sleep a lot.

5. When I want to be left alone, I will walk away.

6. When I want attention, I will pester you.

7. I spend a lot of time staring out the window of my tall, tall apartment building watching people on the street and the birds on the power lines.

8. I SHED

9. If I'm really hungry, I freak out and cry.

10. I can be left alone for long periods, but after enough time I get mad and pissed off.

11. At crowded parties where I don't know anyone, I like to sit in the corner and watch.

I think I made a good case, but it all seemed too good to be true. In February, one of my Chinese students took a photo of me, and I realized that the animal I really look like is a pretty pink piggy:

(Sorry it's blurry. It's a digital picture of a picture. I don't have a scanner.)

I don't think I look bad in this picture at all, but I do think that I look like a pig. And that is fine with me. I don't particularly like pigs, but they are very intelligent, enjoy casserrole-esque food, and they're known to take a nice mud bath when it's hot. Plus, the South is full of pigs.

What's SO great is that below is the full photograph:

High Compassion

Today, in a moment of self-absorption, I was thinking about what I would say if I were in some group situation, like a corporate conference or the first day of graduate school or some writing class and some group leader wanted everyone to name his or her greatest weaknesses. At the corporate conference, some douche-bag would probably say he was too much of a perfectionist and some witty, half-sexy lady would say "chocolate." And if it were graduate school, half the people would name something they thought was clever ("space and time") or slightly obscure ("Kraut Rock"). There would definitely be some girl who loves tea who tried to be clever ("the semicolon!") but then everyone who wasn't a complete asshole would kind of feel sorry for her. The other half of the grad school folks would be all witty and might even make you laugh and feel slightly intimidated: "my greatest weakness is gravity."

So this evening while I was driving in downtown San Francisco, I was just thinking about how I must be mildly retarded because I was fantasizing about how badly I would love to be able to say "I'm self-righteous and I talk like a 14-year-old girl in an internet chat room" (OMG, R U Serious!?!?).

Self-righteousness is integrity and compassion gone too far. It's idealizing a way of being right in the world so intently that ends up placing more emphasis on that than on the "beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh" who inhabit it [1]. In the New Testament, the Pharisees were so concerned with how Jesus didn't conform to what they thought the Messiah was supposed to be like that they couldn't see that he was him. It's different than being judgemental. It's wanting so much for the world to be full goodness that you are intolerant of people when they don't conform to how you feel you would act. It's some Mormons, it's some punks.

There's a fine line between having integrity and being self-righteous. I never knew this existed until today, when I thought about the poem "A Broken Appointment" by Thomas Hardy while I was driving. It's a poem about a man being stood up by a woman. What makes him sad isn't so much that she didn't show up, but that he realized that she didn't have enough character to show up and be kind, even if she didn't love him.

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,
and marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindess' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I know and knew it. But unto the store
Of deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?

--1901


In the third line of the second stanza Hardy says, "I know and knew it." What does "it" refer to? Is he saying he knew when he invited her that only love could "lend [her] loyalty" (i.e. that only if she loved him would she show up)? Or is he saying that he knew when he invited her that she didn't love him?

When you read it the first way, Hardy seems like he's testing her. Or like he's a martyr. This way is self-righteous. He creates a situation knowing that she will disappoint him and give him a reason to re-impose his view of the world on everyone else.

But if you read it the second way, that he invites her knowing that she doesn't love him, just to be with her, not expecting anything from her, then she is a fool to not show up.

And depending on how you're feeling at a certain hour of any day, either interpretation holds up. I think.

********

[1] That quote is from Walt Whitman "Children of Adam" in Leaves of Grass. Dear Lord, go read it. It's lovely!

Sharks and All That

I just finished reading the book Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey. It's about the Farallon Islands, which are about 40 miles west of San Francisco. They're vicious. The Native Americans thought that was where evil people went to live for all eternity (and all along you thought it was Spokane, Washington!).

Nowadays, the islands are home to tons of seals and, due to this, a population of Great White Sharks that attack anything remotely resembling a seal (i. e. a surfboard). Sharks are so old they predate trees. Can you imagine a time when the world didn't have any trees? Or grass? But some giant fish with three rows of teeth was evolving its scale-y skin?

[Spoiler of the film Deep Water below:]

This woman I used to "work" for showed the film Deep Water on her 50th birthday. That's the film about the couple who was forgotten on a scuba trip and were never found. It's sort of assumed that they were eaten by sharks. Sorry I ruined it for you. It's based on a true story. If you get a kick out of imagining being eaten by large sea creatures, then this is the film for you. And I'm with you on that one.

I do think it's sad that a relatively "young" person (50 ain't old) tried to suggest that it's all over and the sharks are just coming to get you on your 50th birthday. Now, I may be only 27 (god's perfect number), but I do know A LOT of Senior Citizens and fifty seems so adolescent in comparison. I hope that I hit my stride by then and stop getting all pissy around 3:00 every afternoon.

Love ya,
Susanna

I Just Hope That

That someday, someday, they publish a book about me, a book titled:

Susanna Williams: Mildly Retarded?